90% of the year, we leave vendors alone as if they are not doing much of substance.

But an even bigger blind spot is around technology projects at customer sites.

As I conduct interviews for the next book project, I am hearing about autonomous car and EV technologies, CPG companies which are preparing for coming same day delivery models in their grocery customers, complex safety simulation at oil companies, elaborate new data centers to support sub-second trading environments at banks. And these conversations are with companies across major continents.

The other interesting thing is they talk about social, mobile, cloud, Big Data in passing – those are just enabling terms as they make their products smarter, look at massive operational efficiencies via technologies and look at revenue generating and business model changing technology.

The chasm between what is being written about by technology bloggers, analysts and journalists and what is happening in the real world keeps growing. And I believe it goes back to too much focus on vendor events for most of the sourcing of stories.

90% of the year, we leave vendors alone as if they are not doing much of substance.

But an even bigger blind spot is around technology projects at customer sites.

As I conduct interviews for the next book project, I am hearing about autonomous car and EV technologies, CPG companies which are preparing for coming same day delivery models in their grocery customers, complex safety simulation at oil companies, elaborate new data centers to support sub-second trading environments at banks. And these conversations are with companies across major continents.

The other interesting thing is they talk about social, mobile, cloud, Big Data in passing – those are just enabling terms as they make their products smarter, look at massive operational efficiencies via technologies and look at revenue generating and business model changing technology.

The chasm between what is being written about by technology bloggers, analysts and journalists and what is happening in the real world keeps growing. And I believe it goes back to too much focus on vendor events for most of the sourcing of stories.